4.22 HISTORY OF 



Standing this, he was well-proportioned and handsome ; his health 

 was good, but his understanding scarcely passed the bounds of 

 instinct. It was at that time that the king of Poland, having 

 heard of such a curiosity, had him conveyed to Lunenville, gave 

 him the name of Baby, and kept him in his palace. 



Baby, having thus quitted the hard condition of a peasant, 

 to enjoy all the comforts and conveniences of life, seemed to 

 receive no alteration from his new way of living, either in mind 

 or person. He preserved the goodness of his constitution till 

 about the age of sixteen, but his body seemed to increase very 

 slowly during the whole time; and his stupidity was such, that 

 all instructions were lost in improving his understanding. He 

 could never be brought to have any sense of religion, nor even 

 to show the least signs of a reasoning faculty. They attempted 

 to teach him dancing and music, but in vain ; he never could 

 make any thing of music ; and as for dancing, although he beat 

 time tolerably exact, yet he could never remember the figure, but 

 while his dancing-master stood by to direct his motions. Not- 

 withstanding, a mind thus destitute of understanding was not 

 without its passions ; anger and jealousy harassed it at times : nor 

 was he without desires of another nature. 



At the age of sixteen, Baby was twenty-nine inches tall ; at 

 this he rested ; but having thus arrived at his acme, the alter- 

 ations of puberty, or rather, perhaps, of old age, came fast upon 

 him. From being very beautiful, the poor little creature now 

 became quite deformed ; his strength quite forsook him ; his 

 back-bone began to bend ; his head hung forward ; his legs grew 

 weak ; one of his shoulders turned awry ; and his nose grew dispro- 

 portionably large. With his strength, his natural spirits also for- 

 sook him ; and, by the time he was twenty, he was grown feeble, 

 decrepit, and marked with the strongest impressions of old age. 

 It had been before remarked by some, that he would die of old 

 age before he arrived at thirty ; and, in fact, by the time he was 

 twenty-two, he could scarcely walk a hundred paces, being worn 

 out with the multiplicity of his years, and bent under the burden 

 of protracted life. In this year he died ; a cold, attended with 

 a slight fever, threw him into a kind of lethargy, which had a few 

 momentary intervals ; but he could scarcely be brought to 

 speak. However, it is asserted, that in the five last years in 

 his life, he showed a dearer understanding than in his times 



